This confrontation between a hospital public relations person and an investigative TV reporter unfolds like a slow motion car crash.
The setting: A sleepy public meeting hosted by a Northern California hospital. A local TV news crew arrives in pursuit of a story about alleged abuse of a patient gift fund. The investigative reporter pounces for an ambush interview. The PR guy steps in and decides to throw gasoline on the fire.
The lessons here for PR are obvious enough: Don’t antagonize a reporter. Don’t escalate a tense situation. Don’t become the story. DON’T BE CRAZY!
But I also want to add a word of caution against the “siege mentality” a negative story can breed in PR , in which the press is viewed as the enemy. Negative stories happen, but the press is not your enemy. There might be people in your company who feel that way, but the PR person does not have that luxury. Your job is to fix things.
The PR person in this little passion play — who I’m not going to name. He’s having a bad enough week as it is — has an “us” against “them” mindset that makes him think it’s OK to treat this reporter with disrespect.
Another takeaway is that this was a PR “FAIL” before the PR person said his first word. The real work of PR needed to begin much earlier – tracking down answers to the reporter’s questions, coordinating the response, setting up interviews, and generally doing whatever it took to avoid having the “I-Team” show up at your public meeting.
My thanks to Mark Bernheimer of MediaWorks Resource Group for calling attention to this little gem.
Tags: hospital, investigative reporter, journalism, Mark Bernheimer, MediaWorks Resource Group, public relations
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